


Breathe

by SyllableFromSound



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Aquaphobia, Character Study, Drabble, Drowning, F/M, Tumblr Prompt, poor barry :'(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-09 00:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17396834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyllableFromSound/pseuds/SyllableFromSound
Summary: "'Drowning,' Barry answered when some other children asked him what he thought was the worst way to die. He said it with no hesitation."A character study based on the prompt "Your Worst Fear."





	Breathe

"Drowning," Barry answered when some other children asked him what he thought was the worst way to die. He said it with no hesitation. His parents had made him stop watching late-night documentaries about survivors of natural disasters and near-death experiences, in an attempt to assuage his nightmares. But the damage had already been done. When the people on television described the way their lungs seemed to fill with fire as they held their breath to the point of agony, he could nearly feel a burning in his own chest. Underwater, the solemn-faced experts would say, their bodies would betray them while trying to save them, as they involuntarily gasped for air. He thought of the surge of water invading his windpipe and punching into his lungs. He could think of nothing worse.

Not that he told any of his fellow classmates that. He just said, "Drowning," and left it at that. The other kids blinked at him for a moment before turning back to one another, continuing their discussion of how falling into a volcano while being eaten by a shark might be the most painful possible death. Barry guessed his answer had bored them. That was fine. They didn't ever speak to him much anyway, and that was fine, because he had other things he would rather focus on. He was grateful that they didn't ask him to elaborate on his answer. If they had, they would know why, whenever one of their parents sent out a class-wide invitation to a birthday pool party, he never showed up, regardless of how his parents cajoled him to go and make friends there.

He looked back down at his notebook and kept scraping away with his pencil. The worksheet that their teacher had given him lay off to the side of the desk, completed, and now he doodled in the margins of his pages. Moons pockmarked with craters and gas giants circled by ribbons of cloud and planets with rings of orbiting asteroids, represented by tiny graphite dots. Things that he would have to fly to in order to reach, lifting him far above his blue planet.

"I'm glad you're challenging yourself," his college academic advisor told him when he was sixteen, "but are you sure you really want to take six courses in a quarter? I don't normally advise students to take more than four at a time. And most of them aren't taking graduate-level astrophysics."

"I'm sure," he said.

Her lip quirked downward in doubt. "I just don't want you to feel like you're drowning. Things can get overwhelming quickly."

He resisted the urge to grimace at that. Instead, he smiled nervously down at her desk calendar, bouncing his knee under the desk. "I've taken six at a time before. I...I can handle it. Actually, uh, sorry, but can I go now? I have a class."

"Yes, go ahead." He slid his chair back from the desk, grabbed his bag, and was almost out of the room when she said from behind him, "And Barry? Let me know if at any point it becomes too much."

He nodded. He knew he wouldn't. That's because he wasn't drowning. He was swimming when everyone around him was content to tread water. If that meant he sometimes stayed awake for 48 hours writing three lab reports at once, so be it. That was the price of his aspirations. But he surely wasn't drowning, even if now and then his heart would suddenly beat so fast it against his ribs it felt like his chest was ready to burst.

"Ay, Barold," Taako called from the river bank. "You coming or what?"

Barry swallowed, and as he stepped forward, he hoped that no one could see his legs shaking beneath his baggy and battered jeans. They had landed on a wilderness planet this cycle, and tracking the Light this time around meant fording the rapids. The white water rolled up towards him like a submerged beast rising, spray smacking him in the face as he came to the river's edge.

Nervously, he glanced at the rafts that he had helped design and build. He had been careful in his measurements, in his choice of materials, in the way he sealed the bottoms of the makeshift boats to keep the water from snaking in. But there were variables he could not control here. He had no way of knowing just how much force the water would strike the craft with, nor whether he could expect sharp rocks underneath them. He couldn't be careful enough to know for sure that he wasn't about to doom his friends to drowning.

"Yo, Bluejeans, you good? You look even paler than usual."

"I'm fine," he said. "I'm fine." He stepped onto one of the rafts, and he couldn't tell how much of its wobbling was due to the rocking of the river and how much was due to the fact that he was quivering.

He wasn't the navigator this time, which was fortunate, because he paid no attention to where they were going. For the entire journey, his eyes were fixed on the bottom of the raft. If he turned his head to look at the water, he would too easily be able to envision his friends being pulled beneath the white froth. He clenched his fists and focused on trying to keep his bile down. Tried not to think about anyone going overboard and whether he would be quick enough to pull them back.

"Um."

At the sound, he turned to look at Lup, sitting next to him. Her eyebrow quirked upward as she looked down at his hand. Which, he realized at only this exact moment, he had accidentally clasped around the fabric of her red robe.

He choked on air. "I-I'm sorry," he said, releasing his grip. "I didn't even noticed, I--"

She snorted, nose wrinkling. "It's cool." Then, after a pause, she added, "Hang in there, Barold. We're close."

He barely heard door to his room opening over the sound of his sobs. His head was in his hands, pushing his glasses painfully against the bridge of his nose, but he didn't care. Everything around him was suffocating, as though the air had been replaced with a new substance that was thick and impossible to breathe. It might as well have been. Maybe one cycle they'd come across an alien world that would be entirely uninhabitable, that would kill them all fucking instantly instead of one by one over the course of a year. They'd already lost three of their number in as many months this year.

A pair of hands touched his, then. They slowly and carefully pulled his hands away from his face and grasped them securely, so that they would stop shaking. "Hey."

He paused. The voice was one he recognized--how could he not?--but a little unfamiliar all the same. It was softer, gentler, than he'd ever heard it before.

He raised his head slowly, blinking until the tears cleared and he found Lup in front of him. She had her head tilted slightly to the side and looked up at him with concern written on her features. He tried to speak, to apologize for disturbing her with his stupid crying, but the words couldn't push past the lump in his throat.

"It's okay, Barry," she whispered. "You're okay. You don't have to talk about it now."

He squeezed a few more tears out of his eyes and opened his mouth to try talking again, but she was faster. Before he knew what had happened, her forehead was pressed against his. He could feel her breath, warm and steady, against his wet cheeks. She brought her fingers up to his temples and began massaging them slowly.

His tears stopped, then, for a moment. It was as though they'd been shocked into stillness, just as he himself had been. After a long, stunned pause, he managed to get out, "W...what are..."

"This used to help Taako when he was upset." She froze, and when she pulled back slightly he could see her frown. "Should I stop?"

"No! No."

"Alright. Just breathe with me, okay?"

He did. And maybe it was the way she took his focus away from his worries or maybe it was the softness of her hands, but as he breathed, he felt lighter, like she buoyed him.

He spent every day nearly drowning in his own magic. Every moment he spent as a lich, he could feel it preparing to wash over his mind, submerging him until he was lost.

He wanted it, somehow. He wanted it in the way someone running out of oxygen wants to take in a breath, desperately, regardless of the harm. He wanted to let it take him over, rush into him. He could just stop, let go and let it become him, transforming him from the inside out.

Some voice in his head ready to consume him said, _Forget her. Forget about all of them like they've forgotten about you. It'll be easier._

Of course not. He shoved it all down and treaded as he waited, exhausted, for his body to grow, to start it all again. He thought of her breath on his skin and clung to that to stay afloat.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I was doing an fic writing ask meme on Tumblr and folks really seemed into the one I wrote about Barry, so I thought I'd polish it a bit and post it here! I had so much fun with this one, tbh, especially since it's my first time writing Barry.
> 
> Thank you so much for clicking and reading. Please consider leaving a quick comment if you enjoyed it!


End file.
